Okay
we need to get to the bottom of
who Elon Musk really is.
- Okay so, when did it all start?
- It's not when or where, but who.
- It starts with the world's oldest supermodel.
- Her name is Maye like the month,
but with an E at the end.
- Thanks for spelling my name, Elon.
- Says Maye Haldeman immigrated from Canada
to South Africa in 1950, 20 years later,
she married Errol Musk.
And a year after that in 1971, Elon was born.
- And yeah, he always was very curious,
and, when he started reading,
anything he read, he memorized.
I mean, he, he knew exactly what he'd read.
- I thought I was insane.
- Why'd you think you were insane?
- Because it was clear that other people did not.
Their mind wasn't exploding with ideas.
- They wouldn't understand. - I hoped they wouldn't
find out, cause they might like put me away or something.
- [Interviewer] You thought that.
- [Elon] For a second. Yes.
- He hated going to school,
because the other kids
like to follow him home
and they would throw soda cans at his head.
- Wasn't his parents' marriage tumultuous.
- Yeah, Earrol was allegedly abusive.
- Allegedly?
- Did you suffer that kind of abuse?
- Yes.
You know there was a saying in South Africa,
when, when you get divorced you stop falling in the shower
because every time you have been seen with bruises,
you said you fell in the shower.
- Elon never talks about his father.
- Why is that?
- Whenever the topic of Errol arrives,
member of Elon's family climb up.
They're in agreement that he is not
a pleasant man to be around.
- It was not a happy childhood.
My father .
- So he sought refuge in computer games?
Which got him into coding.
- He made a space theme, video game called "Blaster".
- What do video games do for you?
- Maybe want to learn how to program computers.
Cause then I thought, well, I could make my own games.
- You get to control something.
- Yeah, you can construct a little universe.
- When I was in high school we called them geeks.
And it was not a compliment.
What is a geek? Somebody who is obsessed
with learning something, mastering a skill set
or a body of knowledge and would rather do that
than develop social skills.
- I think on like Wikipedia it says
that I was inspired by my father in terms of technology.
This is not the-, this is actually not true.
I think that needs to be corrected.
He was somewhat of a Luddite actually.
Um, in many respects, particularly computers.
Um, he didn't want to buy a computer
and refused to use computers
and said they would never to anything.
As far as role models, um.
Neil Armstrong was one of his heroes.
- [Neil] That's one small step for a man,
one, giant leap for mankind.
- Do you think from your knowledge of the moon
and having been there, that it is going to be
possible in the foreseeable future to
set up scientific basis there
or anything like a large scale?
- Oh, I'm quite certain that we'll have
such bases in our lifetime.
- That, right there, that's what gave Elon his purpose.
- When I was growing up, I read lots of books
and they were very often set in the United States.
It seemed like a lot of new technology
was being developed from the United States.
So I thought, okay, I really want to work on new technology.
So I want to get to Silicon Valley.
- Back in '95, there weren't very many people
on the internet, um, and certainly
nobody was making any money at all.
Most people thought the internet
was going to be a fad.
- In the following years, he founded
Zip2 and then PayPal.
- So this is an ATM.
And what we're going to do is transform
the traditional banking industry.
- I met him when I was 18. He was 19.
We were at college.
- Science fiction, novelist, Justine Wilson.
- My fear is that we become spoiled brats,
that we lose a sense of appreciation and um,
perspective.
- How many kids did they have?
- Six.
- I'm only counting five.
- I had a son who died, at 10 weeks.
It was called a SIDS related incident.
And I went to burning man, I think six times
after that happened.
And I had a ritual I would do.
And I would go to the temple of loss,
when I always found a place in one of the walls
and I would write, Nevada Alexander Musk.
He was a good baby.
And then they would, set the temple on fire.
And that ritual was incredibly comforting to me.
- Did Elon ever talk about it.
- [Man] No.
- He just threw himself into his work.
- It needs to be things
that make you look forward to waking up in the morning.
Wake up in the morning you look forward to the day
for to the future.
- In a future where we are a space bearing civilization
and out there among the stars,
I think that's very exciting.
- We create, a parallel world,
to escape the world that rejects us
to the world that we find too painful to live in.
But some people are so good at doing it,
and master such an amazing skill set.
That they take their world
and they infuse it into our world.
And they change it.
- And these are the people we call visionaries.
- [Interviewer] 2008,
the rocket company is not going well.
You had three failures.
- Right.
The car company is hemorrhaging money.
- Yeah.
Each month that passes is literally
costs us tens of millions of dollars.
I mean, we need to appreciate that.
- And the American economy has
tanked to be in the worst recession
since the great depression.
- Right.
- [Barack Obama] This is huge.
This is a major thread for our economy.
- [Interviewer] What was that you liked for you?
- And I'm getting forced by the way.
- [Woman] And then came the betrayal.
- Who betrayed him?
- Space X's lack of experience bothers
some NASA legends, like Apollo astronauts,
Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan.
- With having cut my teeth in
rockets more than 50 years ago.
I am not confident.
- Now's the time to overrule
this administration's pledge to mediocrity.
- [Interviewer] You know, there are American heroes
who don't like this idea.
Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan.
And I wonder what you think of that.
- I was very sad to see that
because those guys are, yeah,
you know, that those guys are heroes of mine,
so it's really tough.
- They inspired you to do this didn't they?
- Yes.
- And to see them casting stones in your direction.
- It's difficult.
- Did you expect them to cheer you on?
- Saw the hope that they would.
- What are you trying to prove to them?
- I think he understood at that moment,
that he would never fit in.
- But I think people can choose to be not ordinary.
You know, they can choose to not necessarily
conform to the conventions that were taught
to them by their parents.
So yes, I think, I think it's possible
for ordinary people to choose to be
extraordinary.
- But the edge,
can be a very interesting place to be.
I mean it can be lonely and painful
and sometimes dangerous and I don't mean
to underplay any of that.
But it's also the place
where something is in the process
of turning into something else.
Revolution enters at the edges.
Well, we've spent part, if not most,
if not all of our lives, trying to amputate
those parts of ourselves that did not fit.
You know, we've tried to be pleasing
and we've tried to do what's expected,
and we suck at it.
And we eventually reach a point,
where we realize that we are so depressed or stuck
or numbed out, that the only way to save ourselves
is to figure out, how to be ourselves on purpose.
- C'mon.
- Before we call these people visionaries.
- Before they have that kind of success.
We have other words for them,
we call them, you know, geek,
or outsider,
socially awkward, weird,
little different, odd one out.
- Critics say you can't do this.
Your answer to them is...
- We've done it.
- [Elon] That's what outsiders do.
You don't change the world
by fitting in or conforming.
- [Woman] You change the world by creating a new one.
- Elon Musk visited Amber Heard
late at night while Johnny was awake.
They were also caught on camera together in the elevator
of the building getting a little bit handsy.
- It is my brain, my heart.
- I don't know what I did.
- Had anyone brought this to your attention?
- No, I, I...
was just looking at it and.